From June the 29th to July the 12th 2014, 44 lucky students gathered to the Urban Life & Mobility summer school in Sophia Antipolis on the French Riviera. This 2-week course was organised at Eurecom by EIT ICT Labs as part of a Master Programme to develop students skills in both ICT and entrepreneurship through Europe.
This year, 8 summer schools are organized by EIT ICT Labs to cover the 8 innovation areas in their scope. These courses take place in July/August in 7 European cities : Stockholm, Helsinki, Trento, Eindhoven, Oulu, Karlsruhe and Sophia Antipolis. The 1st week is dedicated to thematic presentations, technology, business modeling courses and companies visits. The 2nd one is devoted to projects business plan developments - based on use cases - that are pitched by the students and voted by academic and professional jury during the last day. This course is mandatory for EIT ICT Labs Master students and grants them 4 credits. Nevertheless, it is also open to students from countries not covered by EIT ICT Labs or universities that are not partners yet.
The Urban Life & Mobility summer school took place at Eurecom in Sophia Antipolis, France. The event gathered 44 students out of whom 28 were part of the EIT ICT Labs Master Programme. The other 16 came from other countries such as Romania, Poland, Portugal or from other universities such as University of Nottingham. 27 nationalities (e.g. Indian, French, Chinese, Swedish, Belgian, Italian etc.) from 18 universities (e.g. KTH, UPMC, Aalto University etc.) worked together for 2 weeks mixing different competencies, cultures and backgrounds so as to innovate. 25 prestigious lecturers were invited such as Nicolas Le Douarec - entrepreneur, co-founder of CitizenCar, peer-to-peer car rental, bought by Buzzcar since then - or Georges Amar - futurologist specialized in mobility, ex Innovation Director at RATP, the company that runs the Parisian underground. "Here, we had the opportunity to talk with guys from the business. Not at school" said a student.
At the end, 8 teams of students presented their projects in a 7-minute pitch on stage. All students worked very hard and presentations were really good. "It was one of my best work group experience ever" said a student. The winning project was UbiTaxi, a revolutionary taxi-booking platform aimed at competing with vehicle hire with driver in France. As a reward, the team was invited to present the project during the Urban Life & Mobility event to take place at the end of the year in Paris in front of 200 professionals. Number 2 was Cityhunt - gamification of tourist office via totem terminals disseminated in town - and number 3 Osmeo - software solution to optimize workforce mobility in the building and civil engineering sector. The use cases were respectively given by Eurecom, Cloud Connecté and Rennes 1 university. For those who would like to attend the Urban Life & Mobility summer school next year, stay tuned and be prepared to cross the Channel!
Watch the Urban Life & Mobility Summer School 2014 on YouTube.
Chantal Garnier - EIT ICT Labs Paris, France
